Qualcomm WiPower will now charge phones with metal cases, breaking a barrier which had prevented wireless charging on more expensive models.

The solution, which uses Qualcomm WiPower technology, is designed to be compliant with the Rezence standard and becomes the first announced solution to support wireless charging for metal devices.

The techniques for designing a device to charge through a metal back cover, as well as the full suite of WiPower reference designs, are available today to WiPower licensees.

Steve Pazol, General Manager at Wireless Charging, Qualcomm said that building a wireless charging solution into devices with metal exteriors was a significant step for moving the entire industry forward.

"Today, more device manufacturers are choosing to use metal alloys in their product designs to provide greater support and, of course, aesthetics. QTIs engineering advancement removes a major obstacle facing wireless power and opens the continued adoption of this desirable feature to a much wider range of consumer electronics and use cases."

WiPower works at a frequency that is more tolerant of metal objects that come within the charge field.

Objects such as keys and coins in the charge field and do affect the charging. WiPower has added the ability to have the device made of metal. This advance preserves WiPower's existing ability to charge devices needing up to 22 watt at faster speeds when compared to other wireless charging technologies.

Based on Near Field Magnetic Resonance technology, WiPower enables greater flexibility and convenience in wireless charging. This allows for a wide range of compatible consumer-electronic and handset devices to charge without precise alignment or direct physical contact.

The technology enables simultaneous charging of multiple devices with different power needs while using Bluetooth Smart to reduce hardware needs.

The cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street have been mulling over the news that Qualcomm might spin off its chip making business.

According to Reuters analysts all think that Intel should buy Qualcomm. We wondered what Wall Street had been smoking so we bugged an all-night coffee bar in New York and recorded a group of analysts having a business meeting. We have changed the names of the analysts to protect their identity.

A (breathes in): No, I tell you. Qualcomm will have to sell up (breaths out slowly) it is in a mess and the patent side of the business is propping up the chip side.B: (giggles) did you say pooping up.A: Propping up... you know, supporting (giggles)B: I think... I think you are right... but Intel, Intel phaw eh? Can you imagine Intel's fabs chucking out Qualcomm chips... it would be the end as we know it.C: It would be like... Intel really being in the mobile market. Like now.A (breathes out) Yeah... and Intel would not have to bribe people to make its gear.C: Are you going to have that all-night?A: Sorry.C: Ta (Breathes in). It would be like a badger eating a racoon and becoming a very big badger with an attitude problem. (Breathes out)B: Intel would be a super badger... it has the stripes.A: Of course the regulators would never allow it. Nasty, nasty FCC.B: Nasty.C: Still (breathes in) it would be a lot better than the Chinese getting their hands on it.B: (giggles) You want sweet and sour with your chips?A: Don't say that I am already feeling peckish.C: But if Intel had it Qualcomm cut costs and price its chips more competitively (breathes out)B: Ta (breathes in) True, but the issue with Qualcomm isn't its chips... you know what it is?C: Badgers?B: (breathes out and coughs) Nahh... it is... oh damn forgot what I was going to say now.A: Don't worry you will remember when the Wall Street Journal rings you in half an hour.C: I reckon that Intel could offer about $24 a share.A: How did you work that out then?C: Scientific accounting...A &B (make indistinct noise)C: No, no hear me out. What you do is take the number of women in this bar and work it out on a dollar for each breast. There are 12 women here tonight so that is $24. I call it the TBI, I got that quoted in the New York Times last week. They didn't ask what it meant didn't have the heart to tell them it stood for Two Breast Index.A&B: (Giggles).B: But the only problem with that is the TBI index for Qualcomm's is the same as Intel's.C: Oh yeah... good point. Hang on that woman has going so Qualcomm's TBI is $2 lower than Intel's. Sounds like a good buy. Sh*t better text the WSJ.A&B: (Collapse into hysterical laughter)

Chipmaker Qualcomm is considering breaking itself up and firing 4000 people, which is exactly what our source said it would do last week.

Even the Wall Street Journal thought that 4000 was too high and when it reported staff cuts it said only 2000 would be going. Obviously Fudzilla's sources are more saucy than the WSJ.

Qualcomm admits that things are not going well it delivered its third profit warning this year and is facing rising competition from Taiwan's MediaTek.

The outfit plans to reduce costs by $1.4 billion, cut about 4,500 full-time staff, or 15 percent of its workforce.

Hedge fund Jana Partners wants Qualcomm to spin off its chip business from its profitable patent-licensing income. It does not believe that the chip making business is worth Qualcomm's time when there is real money to be made being a patent troll.

Qualcomm president Derek Aberle has admitted that the company had decided to take a fresh look at the corporate structure.

"The environment is constantly changing so the analysis done earlier may not be valid anymore, so it's in that context that we're taking a look at it again now," Aberle said.

The company said it expected to complete its strategic review by the end of the year and agreed to add three new board members in cooperation with the activist.

The company cut both its full-year revenue forecast and the outlook for its semiconductor business.Revenue fell 14.3 percent to $5.83 billion in the third quarter — the first quarterly fall in five years — and missed the average analyst estimate of $5.85 billion.

The rest of the world has finally woken up to what we told it a week ago -- Qualcomm is preparing to lay off ten per cent of its staff.

This morning Reuter's hacks managed to stand up the story that chipmaker Qualcomm Inc is preparing to lay off several thousand employees, or more than 10 percent of its 30,000-strong workforce.

Qualcomm, which reported a 46 percent drop in second-quarter profit in April, is facing increasing competition from Taiwan's MediaTek Inc and a handful of small Chinese companies that specialize in making chips for low-priced phones.

Qualcomm is still saying nothing, but at least Reuters credited us with breaking the story. We said there would be 4,000 jobs, but it said 3,000.

Qualcomm forecast third-quarter revenue and profit below analysts' expectations in April, saying the loss of a key customer and delays in product launches by some smartphone makers will hurt sales of its flagship Snapdragon chips.

Longtime customer Samsung Electronics Co opted this year to use an internally developed processor for its new Galaxy S6 smartphone and Note rather than Snapdragon chips.

Qualcomm has also been under pressure from hedge fund Jana Partners to spin off its chip business from its highly profitable patent-licensing business.

The European Commission has opened two antitrust investigations into Qualcomm's possible abuse of its market dominance of semiconductors.

The first investigation looks at whether Qualcomm, which is the market leader for baseband chipsets, offered cash to customers if they bought exclusively or almost exclusively baseband chipsets from it.

The second investigation will look into whether Qualcomm engaged in 'predatory pricing' by charging prices below costs with a view to forcing its competition out of the market.

European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said: "Many customers use electronic devices such as a mobile phone or a tablet and we want to ensure that they ultimately get value for money."

It would be jolly good if the EU started investigating if consumers were getting their money's worth. Looking at the mark-up on some mobile gadgets we would have thought a bigger inquiry was a long time in coming.

Qualcomm is undergoing major restructuring and one side-effect of the overhaul is that some 4,000 jobs might be slashed.

The company, according to our well informed industry sources, will announce this during the upcoming Qualcomm Q3 FY15 earnings conference call that Is scheduled for July 22. We could not find out which jobs will be affected, but we expect that the company will shad more light on it during the call.

In December 2014 the company announced that it would slash some 900 jobs and it ended up slashing roughly 1,500 jobs. This will be the first major announcement and it comes at a bad time, as the company's sales numbers are not that great. Qualcomm lost its highest end customer, Samsung, and companies like HTC who are using the Snapdragon 810 are not too happy about company's highest end SoC offering.

Qualcomm has around 31,300 employees, which is still not that much considering that Intel has some 100,000, but its main SoC competitor, MediaTek, has just over 10,000 employees making its operational costs much smaller.

If the number of employees 31,300 didn’t change in recent months, slashing 4,000 jobs would mean cutting the 12.8 percent of the workforce. This is a major adjustment, no question about it.

Still, we believe that the server division will start making some money in 2016 and the new Snapdragon 820 is expected to start shipping later this year. In the long run, the company is more than fine, it is just that the competitors have changed from Nvidia and Intel to MediaTek.

Consumer electronics giant Apple could also be vulnerable - 17 percent of the company's overall revenue last fiscal year came from China, and in the most recent quarter it sold more iPhones in the country than in the United States for the first time, Reuters wailed.

The fault is not Apples' of course but the slowing pace of China's economic growth, oh and a weakening demand for mobile devices.

Among the companies with the biggest exposure to China are Qualcomm and fellow chipmaker Broadcom which depend on China for 50 percent and 24 percent of their overall revenue, respectively and of course Apple.

Cirrus Logic which supplies integrated circuits for audio and automotive applications, reports that it made nearly 80 percent of its revenue in China last year, so it could be in trouble.

Cirrus Logic told Reuters that the number represents where its products are manufactured and not necessarily the end-market where products are sold. The company said it did not currently see any impact on its business.

Apple's involvement in China was always tentative because it never wanted to change its business model to suit the local conditions. This meant that people buying Apple gear were always going to be the extremely wealthy who liked the idea of a Western novelty, or those who aspired. This might be a big market one year, but once the novelty has worn off, such types will go for another expensive shiny thing and those who aspire are going to look for something a little cheaper.

Apple clearly sees the writing on the wall on this because it has had time to brief its fans in the Tame Apple Press. If the figures turn out bad, then it will seem that everyone is doing badly. The fact is though that cheaper Chinese products are not.

MediaTek is giving the US chipmaker Qualcomm a run for its money in the LTE Baseband Market.

Qualcomm has been the leader in this market but MediaTek appears to be catching up fast. The new Meizu MX5 for example has the flagship Helio X10 processor from MediaTek.

Analysts at Strategy Analytics has said that while Qualcomm hasn't lost any share in this market, and still owns about 61 per cent MediaTek is emerging. The company holds about 18 per cent per cent with Spreadtrum, Samsung and Marvell making up the rest.

Strategy Analytics Associate Director Sravan Kundojjala stated that MediaTek had become a solid competitor to Qualcomm now, even though there's still a huge difference between the pair.

He expects that to continue to rise throughout 2015 and 2016, as MediaTek gets into more and more gear out there.

US chipmaker Qualcomm has told the world that it will not be dumping its "essentially useless chip making" business.

Hedge fund Jana Partners said in April that Qualcomm would make a pile more dosh if it just stuck to being a patent troll and stopped trying to flog "essentially worthless" chips.

Apparently Qualcomm thought about it. Executive Chairman Paul Jacobs the idea has been talked about for a long time, but came to the conclusion that the status quo contained a lot more "synergies." Apparently synergies are a good thing to have about the place, particularly if you have a breeding pair.

Jacobs was less optimistic about Jana Partners' idea which was apparently full of dissynergies which might eat the synergies – or just diss them in public.

Executive Chairman Paul Jacobs said all this intensifying industry competition was not enough to spin off his chip business from its patent-licensing business.

Jacobs said, however, that the company is always evaluating its options and that the situation could change in the future, so maybe there a future for a Qualcomm troll walloping other companies with dissynergies.